| This interdisciplinary study of the Italian author Italo Calvino (1923-1985) examines lightness: a quality of literature achieved by constructing nearly weightless images that prompt the reader to re-think prevailing notions about reality. Interrogating the supposedly postmodern features of his oeuvre, an analysis of primary and secondary sources demonstrates that the theoretical trajectory of lightness stretches from essays published in the 1950s and 60s to Lezioni americane (Six Memos for the Next Millenium) published in 1988. The genealogy of this trajectory is far richer than critics have acknowledged, encompassing Cavalcanti, Boccaccio, Galileo, Nietzsche, Poe, Montale, Gadda, Queneau, Klee, Perec, Ponge and Kundera.; This analysis leads to an exploration of Calvino's praxis of two types of lightness---ascending lightness and Lucretian lightness---in La nuvola di smog (The Cloud of Smog), I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors ), Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics), Le citta invisibili (Invisible Cities) and Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler). Ascending lightness in literature uses images that appeal to the reader's moral and intellectual capacity to break free from the constraints of reality. Lucretian lightness is based on the founding principles of atomic physics and employs images that dissolve weight and petrification.; This study reassesses Calvino's relationship to Lucretius by focusing on two distinct and equally significant coordinates: (1) Calvino's acknowledgement of De rerum natura in his conceptualization of lightness and, more broadly, literature; and (2) De rerum natura as a key to understanding Calvino's fictional corpus. Their affinities allow for a re-thinking of the assumed postmodernity of Calvino, and of the confluence of ethics and aesthetics in his works.; Finally, Calvino's praxis of lightness was also shaped by the engineer and artist Fausto Melotti. From the abstract sculptures of the 1920s and 30s to the thread-like works of the 1960s and 70s, Melotti's oeuvre developed as a progressive subtraction of weight. This study argues that the light portraits of cities in Calvino's Invisible Cities were directly inspired by Melotti's sculptures. |
